It was a holy-grail discovery of the musical world: Tucked away in the basement of American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan’s New York home lay pages of unrecorded song lyrics, written by the legendary folk artist himself.

For nearly five decades, these pages lay hidden, silently gathering dust. Silent, that is, until one fateful discovery by Dylan’s producer and two weeks of intensive jam sessions brought these lyrical time capsules to life.

In the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan and The Band were at the peaks of their careers. With incredibly popular songs such as “Like a Rolling Stone,” this American rock-folk band was in high demand and thus constantly on tour. This life, however, was taking its toll on Dylan, who reported heavy drug use and exhaustion.

In what some refer to as a blessing in disguise, Dylan’s life took an unexpected turn. In 1966, he was involved in a devastating motorcycle crash and forced to take time off from touring. Dylan retreated to his home in upstate New York, disappearing almost altogether from the public eye.

During this time, fortunately, Dylan continued recording music. Working with The Band in the basement of his New York home, Dylan privately recorded songs, providing major hits for many popular artists.

Luckily for the public, the product of all these secret music sessions began to leak into mainstream music, appearing in several bootlegged recordings. Finally, Dylan’s work was brought to light on the “Genuine Basement Tapes,” a set of five CDs containing 107 songs created during these basement sessions. Despite the immensity of these tapes, pieces of Dylan’s music still remained hidden and unrecorded.

Forty-seven years later, new lyrics from this basement session were discovered and finally brought to life. While exploring this now-famous basement, Dylan’s producer discovered pages of never-before-recorded lyrics.

He handed them down to T Bone Burnett, who jumped at the opportunity to work with these lyrics. Burnett put together a musical “super-group,” calling on Marcus Mumford of Mumford and Sons, Elvis Costello, Jim James, Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes. Their daunting task: to revive these lyrics with new music, while evoking the unique sounds that made Dylan so legendary.

The group took on the task, collaborating for two weeks in a basement, simulating the original basement tape recordings that began nearly five decades earlier.

A documentary called “The Long Lost Basement Tapes,” shows just how difficult it was for these writers to recreate what Bob Dylan had done with those lyrics so many years ago.

After two weeks of tediously putting music to these lyrics, and a surprise musical appearance by Johnny Depp, the band finally finished the album, a project that began 47 years ago. The result, “Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes,” is an incredible collaboration of past and present musical genius.

Like a time capsule of Dylan’s music, the lyrics on the “New Basement Tapes” are haunting and timeless, a testament to Dylan’s gift for songwriting and story-telling. The musical accompaniment highlights the creative talent of musicians like Marcus Mumford and Rhiannon Giddens.

Tracks like “Kansas City,” recorded by Mumford, sound like they could have come straight off a Mumford and Sons’ album but still reproduce sounds that emulate Dylan’s Folk legacy.

Other noteworthy songs on the album include “Spanish Mary,” “Florida Key” and “The Whistle Blowing.”

Although the album caught some flack for sounding too contemporary, there is no denying that this collaboration is a testament to the artistic creativity and talent of these new artists — and the incredible legacy that Dylan left behind.

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

As usual, I came late to this party, after leerily keeping my distance from this project based on my initial aversion to both the concept and 'Married to My Hack.' But I did finally buy the CD at a discount. Having read many positive reviews on this site and elsewhere, I was expecting some strengths, and found plenty of them - notwithstanding an unevenness that runs through the proceedings. Giddens is being praised as the big revelation, but frankly 'Spanish Mary' strikes me as humourless and even plodding; the revelation is on the final cut, her superb version of a song Elvis himself does a fine job with earlier on the record.

To my ears, the really obvious standout here is one I wasn't expecting: the irksome Marcus Mumford's rendering of 'Kansas City,' a track that wrings the full measure of what is in fact a top-shelf Dylan lyric. I'm a tad puzzled that that song has not been universally claimed as THE key track of this album - it seems obviously so to me. An absolute clinic in both writing and performance.

Many of the songs suffer from a certain 'studio' vibe I don't like; one tell-tale sign being that they often go on too long (Jim James's terrific spin on 'Hidee Hidee Ho' expires from redundancy about 3/4 of the way through, alas). That there are a number of songs rehashing the same lyrical/musical terrain further compounds the net effect of 'muso' ponderousness. The lyrics, meanwhile - as you might expect - are similarly uneven, but it's quite interesting to hear a cut like 'Florida Key,' which interweaves a very thin fundamental idea with a number of superb couplets. Taylor Goldsmith's excellent musical setting helps to bring out the strong elements. At that point in his career even Bob's scraps contained terrific ideas and bits.

I hated 'Married to My Hack' at first listen, but my appreciation has grown over time; what I like about it is precisely its fecklessness, the track that comes closest to the spirit of the actual basement tapes in its brevity and what-the-hell zaniness. Not that it's very well sung. And EC perpetrates what might be the album's least listenable moment, the disastrous penultimate track ('Kansas City/Liberty Street'), which is grossly inferior to the two songs it references and undermined by EC's stiff and plodding vocals to boot. The fact remains that EC is not, and has never been, a particularly nimble singer, nor is his pitch always steady - failings that have gotten worse rather than better as he ages, and that tend to evacuate such cuts of the energy and zip they need if they're going to work.

Ultimately a failure, this is an entertaining failure that manages to generate a critical mass of quality songs amidst indifferent run-of-the-mill Americana. Worth buying, and I'm glad the reviews on this site goaded me into doing so! So thanks.

When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns
I hope no living thing cries over his bones

Greil Marcus , in a comment on Rhiannon Giddens' new album Tomorrow Is My Turn , makes a passing comment on the New Basement Tapes , though it seems influenced by the documentary -

(extract)

In the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Giddens’s voice is the one you wait for, and when you watch Giddens as part of the so-called New Basement Tapes band in Sam Jones’s documentary Lost Songs — with Marcus Mumford, Elvis Costello, Jim James, and Taylor Goldsmith, she’s searching for music to give a cache of recently discovered 1967 Bob Dylan lyrics — you realize her talent is bottomless. Throwing out rehearsal lines for “Lost on the River” — on the album of the same name, the only performance to redeem the concept — the soulfulness is almost too elegant to bear; the suspense in the movie comes from the looming possibility that as the group runs through one false start or misbegotten arrangement after another, the song will be lost.

Yeah, Giddens is great but I feel like Marcus is being kind of a dick here and really buying too heavily into the narrative that is sort of forced into the documentary to add drama to what actually seemed to be a really pleasant recording experience for everybody involved.

I like it when Marcus is enthusiastic about music but I think he is a bit of a drama queen when he goes negative. His "what is this shit?" review of Self Portrait skewed the conventional wisdom on that album so severely that people generally dismissed it as unlistenable for decades, to the point that when it was revisited for the Another Self Portrait box set everyone finally realized that he had totally overreacted to an album of Dylan doing some cover songs for fun.

Calling Giddens' song "the only performance to redeem the concept" is, I think, him being similarly melodramatic.

Have with Ms wife just listened to plastic disk of Dylan latest due out today/arrived yesterday Sunday/heard FLAC 3 days ago. Will not often replay that album on hifi - maybe just another Dylan version of 'That lucky ol' sun' occasionally.

Buy-enjoy what YOU like legally-appositely - sod the 'experts'.

P.S. The aside re 'Shadows In The Night' by Dyldo out today is spot-on, 'cos it would have been out (maybe with the other 13 tracks he recorded for it...) last November 2014 if 'The New Basement Tapes' had not showed the way for a Sony-Dylan Bootleg ...

Buy-enjoy what YOU like legally-appositely - sod the 'experts'.

Will put on 'LOTR - TNBT' when I get off this desktop - enjoy almost all of it mightily.

Eagle Rock Entertainment has just announced that they will be releasing a brand new documentary featuring previously unheard Bob Dylan lyrics. The doc will feature an excellent array of musicians using sets of lyrics originally written by Bob Dylan in 1967 during The Basement Tapes sessions. The DVD, Lost Songs – The Basement Tapes Continued, features Elvis Costello, Jim James, Marcus Mumford and many more. The original Basement Tapes were recorded in 1967 and featured the artists that later became The Band backing some of Bob Dylan’s greatest work. Though not officially released until 1975, the album demonstrates an incredible chemistry between the musicians, and is often considered some of the best material either artist has to offer.

“The film presents an exclusive and intimate look at the making of the Lost On The River album set against the important and historical cultural backdrop of Bob Dylan and The Band’s original The Basement Tapes,” according to Eagle Rock Entertainment. The documentary is directed by Sam Jones, perhaps best known for the 2003 Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. The film is intended to accompany the November 2014 Harvest Records release Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes which the DVD will surely bring new perspective to.

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

On 25 May 2015, Eagle Rock Entertainment release “Lost Songs – The Basement Tapes Continued”. This is a simultaneous release on DVD, Blu-ray and digital formats [Cat Nos: EREDV1181, ERBRD5266 and EVD1151 respectively]. This release presents the development of a unique project bringing together an extraordinary group of artists to work on previously unknown Bob Dylan lyrics with Grammy-winning producer T Bone Burnett. This release was directed by acclaimed filmmaker Sam Jones (the Wilco documentary “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”).

“Lost Songs – The Basement Tapes Continued” is aimed to be an accompany piece to the album “Lost On The River” that was released by Harvest Records in November 2014. The project focuses on sixteen sets of lyrics that were written by Bob Dylan during the legendary “The Basement Tapes” sessions in 1967 but only recently rediscovered.

Under the auspices of producer T Bone Burnett and with the approval of Bob Dylan an extraordinary collective of musicians was brought together to set the lyrics to music: Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Marcus Mumford. The film presents an exclusive and intimate look at the making of the “Lost On The River” album set against the important and historical cultural backdrop of Bob Dylan and The Band’s original “The Basement Tapes”.

As well as offering an unrivalled insight into these sessions, the film also comes bolstered with Bonus Tracks: ‘Diamond Ring’, ‘Down On The Bottom’, ‘Hidee Hidee Ho #16’, ‘Kansas City’, ‘Six Months In Kansas City (Liberty Street)’ and ‘The Whistle Is Blowing’.

A must for fans of Bob Dylan, of course, “Lost On The River” itself and indeed anyone interested in the creative genesis and development of incredible music.

The bonus tracks sound like the same clips already on Showtime's YouTube channel.

The quest for Dylan material continues in this unusual video documentary.

Rating: **** Audio: **** Video: **** Overall: ****

There has never been a musician with the cultural mystique of Bob Dylan. Perhaps the epitome of this phenomenon is The Basement Tapes. Recorded in upstate New York (1967) with The Band, the collection of roots-based songs graced the underground circuit for years via acetates. Last year a definitive re-mastering of the sessions (culled from Garth Hudson’s master tapes) hit the street in various formats. It would seem that the legacy of The Basement Tapes had been resolved. Not really! Producer T Bone Burnett (once himself a Dylan sideman) completed a project to continue to mine Dylan material. He assembled five musicians to compose music to previously unknown Dylan lyrics from that era. The album titled Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes was also the subject of a documentary by Sam Jones. Now Eagle Rock Entertainment has released a Blu-ray of this film.

Lost Songs – The Basement Tapes Continued is unusual in its genesis. Upon coming in possession of a box of Basement Tapes lyrics, Burnett attempted to become an impresario and gave these lyrics to Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Marcus Mumford with his blessings to bring their talents to complement Bobby (or in his words collaborate with a twenty-seven year old Dylan). With approval from Dylan, himself, Burnett leads the group to immerse themselves in the songwriting. The movie opens with a “dramatic’ re-enactment of Dylan’s motorcycle ride that led to the crash. This odd dramatic re-enactment technique is utilized to supplement the very limited footage of Dylan, There are significant audio interviews (Robbie Robertson’s are insightful) and original audio versions of The Basement Tapes. Burnett brings in the boxes of unfinished (or unused lyrics) and the musicians begin their collaborative process. They are excited and intimidated by the prospects of writing a song with Bob Dylan.

The documentary (shot inside the legendary Capitol Studios) offers an inside look at the musical process. Directed by Sam Jones, it originally aired on Showtime in 2014. There are many noteworthy moments. Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith and Marcus Mumford work on a folk gospel version of “Lost On The River”. There are different versions of songs (“Diamond Ring”) and the subtle calm influence of Burnett is always present. The dichotomy of translating a low-fi, analog project to the modern world of cell phones is interesting. All five musicians shine in this environment. And the music is vibrant, despite the deliberate pace of the film. Songs like “Kansas City” and “Liberty Street” run the gamut from raucous to hymnal. The bonus tracks feature full-length versions of the songs. But the snippets of Dylan and The Band approximate a looser spontaneous vibe.

The video footage shot in the studio is crisp and steady. The colors are natural without any gimmicks (other than the grainy dramatic re-enactments). The HD-Master Audio 5.1 (on the main program) is excellent. Undoubtedly the saga of The Basement Tapes is not over.

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

Poor Deportee wrote:To my ears, the really obvious standout here is one I wasn't expecting: the irksome Marcus Mumford's rendering of 'Kansas City,' a track that wrings the full measure of what is in fact a top-shelf Dylan lyric. I'm a tad puzzled that that song has not been universally claimed as THE key track of this album - it seems obviously so to me. An absolute clinic in both writing and performance.

I finally watched the documentary, months after it aired, and only in order to prepare a bit for Detour. My expectations were entirely fulfilled regarding what a total arse of a person Marcus bloody Mumford is, but I grudgingly have to admit the song, which he put so much blood, sweat and tears into, maaan, sounded pretty decent. I won't be allowing any recordings with him on them into my house, though. I sometimes wonder if my almost worrying loathing of the man is really an expression of some unresolved psychological damage, but then again if you saw them on Later doing their utterly embarrassing 'hey man, we can rock out too' routine, or have seen any of that crap elsewhere, you will realise too that actually my psychology is in a good place and he/they are simply offensive. I don't seem to have heard any references to their no doubt atrocious new rock record anywhere of late, does this mean the entire world has seen sense and rejected it for the atrocity it no doubt is, or am I just not paying any attention?

How come Elvis et al were seemingly so supportive of his little act rather than giving him the good slapping he so patently deserved?

Otis Westinghouse wrote:How come Elvis et al were seemingly so supportive of his little act rather than giving him the good slapping he so patently deserved?

Hello Otis.

I'll attempt an answer: maybe because it was T Bone Burnett's idea to bring them together and because he and EC agreed that this project would make 'crossover' commercial sense for EC and EC wouldn't want to dishonour that? And because EC knows that the world knows that he is obviously in a whole other league anyway, AND because he knows that everyone (except MM fans) knows that MM deserves a slapping and that he won't last for very long in such a commercial musical climate anyway so he's being kind and letting him enjoy being a goose for his 15 minutes. I couldn't stand to watch more than a minute of the youtube of EC and Mumford performing Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost Of Tom Joad but if you care to look I think you'll agree that EC is very obviously totally aware of Mumford's dickness.

Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued plays as much to the arc of its characters- in this case, the musicians assembled to bring to life lyrics Bob Dylan had written in 1967, but never developed into songs- as it does to the documentation of the recording process that resulted in the 2014 album Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. Directed by Sam Jones, the DVD has among its central cast the fatherly T Bone Burnett calmly and judiciously overseeing the Capitol Records session, Elvis Costello as the wise and aging master, Jim James of My Morning Jacket as the ambitious upstart, Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes as the humble, self-effacing newcomer, and the pairing of Marcus Mumford as the struggling, but capable mentor to Rhiannon Giddens’ self-doubting fish out of water. It works in the portrayal of the individual and group dynamics that foster the creation of songs worthy of a Dylan co-writing credit, but does feel a bit convenient to fulfill the film’s need for a narrative. It’s more likely that these participants each had significant moments of creative hesitation given the keys to such a lyrical kingdom, but it’s left instead to mostly Giddens and Mumford to exemplify that emotion, while Costello and James are shown in the more confident, assured light. In the end, though, it’s the title track helmed by Giddens, with a guiding hand from Mumford, that is a scene (and album) stealer, and wraps up the story quite triumphantly. Jones can be criticized for the unnecessary choice of affected, purposefully grainy “footage” of reenactments of Dylan and The Band’s original basement days at Big Pink, as they often distract in unintended ways, and given the voiceovers from the songwriter and his mates themselves, would have better served with photos and clips from the period rather than too-obvious stand-ins. It’s not enough of a minus to defeat Lost Songs as a whole, but prevents it from being an unblemished one.

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

In the summer of 1966, Bob Dylan was in a motorcycle accident that caused him to withdraw from the public eye while he recuperated. Some have conjectured that the burnt-out Dylan was never really involved in such a crash and that he just used it as a cover story to explain his sudden decision to turn hermit. Whatever the circumstances, Dylan's sudden seclusion led to one of his most creatively fertile years, in which he recorded dozens of tracks with his buddies the Hawks (aka The Band) and wrote dozens more lyrics that never got set to music. The recordings were never meant for public consumption, but Dylan sent some of them out as writer's demos for other performers to record. This led to bootlegging, which finally convinced Dylan to authorize a double-LP release of some of the songs, as The Basement Tapes, in 1975.

Nearly forty years after that official album release, Dylan's record label began prepping a massive box set of the complete Basement Tapes recordings, including alternate takes and plenty of songs that never made the official cut. Around the same time, Dylan discovered a box of lyrics written during this 1967 burst of creativity and offered them to his former collaborator T-Bone Burnett to figure out something to do with them.

Burnett decided to assemble a supergroup of performers well-versed in folk and rock music to come up with their own instrumental settings for Dylan's words. The band, dubbed "The New Basement Tapes," consists of Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Rhiannon Giddens of Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes. Their album, Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, was released one week after the archival Basement Tapes Complete box set.

The documentary Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued, which aired on Showtime last November, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the recording of the Lost on the River album. Though the film doesn't take a strictly chronological approach, director Sam Jones (who did the Wilco doc I Am Trying to Break Your Heart) shapes his copious in-studio footage into numerous vignettes that give these two weeks of recording a palpable dramatic arc.

In the beginning, the performers -- especially the younger, greener ones -- wonder and fret about what the collaboration is going to be like, and about whether they are going to be able to pull their weight. Marcus Mumford is particularly nervous because, even though he is the only member of the group who has had a number one record on the charts, he's not nearly as prolific or fast at writing as Elvis Costello or Jim James. Before recording starts, Costello is shown playing back a demo he created mostly by sneaking into an airplane bathroom and singing into his phone. James plays back a layered, multi-track demo that features a choir of backing vocals. Mumford, meanwhile, shows up on the first day with a sketchy idea for a song and another riff besides.

There's a bit of competitiveness to the project, because many of the band members pick the same lyrics and offer different arrangements for the recording. This becomes a problem for Rhiannon Giddens, for example, because she is incredibly talented but not as technically proficient as her bandmates, so she struggles to find collaborations within the group to help her realize the music she hears in her head because she doesn't know how to say, "Try a descending bassline over a B minor chord at that point," or whatever. The development of her version of the title song, "Lost on the River," becomes a thread that runs through much of the film. There's elation when she's able to jam with Marcus Mumford and Taylor Goldsmith to flesh out her melodic ideas. But when she brings it to the full band, it gets muddled and loses the spark. T-Bone Burnett watches from the control booth, not wanting to squash Giddens's creativity, but also well-aware that the band has already cut three other musical arrangements for that lyric. I won't say anymore, but the payoff is worth it.

Each player's trajectory becomes clear as the film goes on. Costello is the old hand who's going to enjoy himself no matter what happens. James is similar but with a more meticulous approach that sometimes flies in the face of what the project is supposed to be about. Mumford is the tortured artist who manages to get some good work out past his self-critical filters. Giddens is the relative outsider who eventually finds her voice within the material and within this group. Goldsmith, meanwhile, is the utility player who is able to facilitate the others' visions, but who is also hungry enough to keep generating his own material to prove he deserves to be in the room.

While the recording sessions offer plenty of engrossing moments, director Jones overstuffs the film with material about the recording of the original Basement Tapes that does not work as well. Jones manages to get interviews with Dylan and Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko from The Band, but they are only audio interviews. For the visuals in these sections, Jones offers up distractingly staged reenactments of the 1967 jam sessions. While there's certainly an interesting backstory to be told about this period, it is a misstep to keep crosscutting between these passages and the new recording sessions.

This approach is apparently meant to suggest that the spirit of those original recordings are spurring on these new recordings, but instead it just underlines how different the circumstances between the sessions are. The original Basement Tapes were made by Dylan and The Band in an actual basement, with no stress and no commercial expectations. Lost on the River, meanwhile, is being recorded in a fancy studio at Capitol Records with the stress-inducing knowledge that a record must come out at the end of this.

Even with its flaws, Lost Songs is pretty fascinating. The process of artistic creation can be esoteric and abstract or even dull and ordinary, which doesn't necessarily make it the most ideal subject for a film, but Jones and his editors manage to successfully dramatize the little and large struggles faced by The New Basement Tapes and make the collaboration inspiring in the process.

Will the album Lost on the River become as influential as the original Basement Tapes? It's doubtful... but then again, who knows? This film justifies its existence either way.

The Blu-ray

The Video:Eagle Rock provides an excellent AVC-encoded 1080p 1.78:1 presentation. The main recording studio footage is sharp and clean with no compression issues. Much of the staged faux-vintage footage looks like it was shot on super 8 film and then intentionally muddied up. Even so, the transfer during these sequences is quite rich and attractive.

The Audio:The disc comes with two options: a DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround mix and an LPCM 2.0 stereo mix. Both mixes are clean and balanced, but the 5.1 version is the clear winner in terms of atmospherics and even power -- the surround mix just has a bit more force to it. The disc offers four subtitle options which appear only during the spoken sections of the film and not during the songs: English, French, Spanish, and German.

Special Features: •Bonus Tracks• (HD, 24:20 total) - Uninterrupted in-studio performances, presented in LPCM 2.0 stereo, of six tracks: Goldsmith's "Diamond Ring," James's "Down on the Bottom," Giddens's "Hidee Hidee Ho #16," Mumford's "Kansas City," Costello's "Six Months in Kansas City (Liberty Street)," and Mumford's "The Whistle Is Blowing." Three of these songs are on the "standard" version of the finished album, while the other three are only found on the "deluxe" extended version of the album.

Final Thoughts:

Lost Songs documents an unusual project, in which five singer-songwriters with five distinct personalities must figure out how to work with not only each other but also their absent lyrical collaborator, Bob Dylan. Both the musicians and the filmmakers come out the other side of this unique process with interesting work to show for it. You don't have to be a fan of Dylan or these artists to get sucked into the film, but of course it helps. Highly Recommended.

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

Rhiannon Giddens was extraordinary in Whelans last night. Singing songs in a range of genres , from Appalachian to Scots gaelic, she and her ensemble were never less than engaging. Greeting her Irish family , seated up in the balcony, she scolded us for our attitude to Limerick - proper order! - and generally delivered a show that was as educational and is it was entertaining.

Starting the show with Spanish Lady - the highlight , as ever, of this project - she spoke a few times about aspects of the Lost In The River recording sessions. Saying how lucky & honoured she was to be part of it she said she daunted by the working with the 'dudes' , 'they were there with all their electric guitars and keyboards , and I was was there with my bango and fiddle and ( pause) my ovaries' , which got a big laugh.

Factory Girl , a highlight of the show , an adaption of a old folk tune , partially rewritten , Rhiannon told us , after hearing news of deaths in a clothing factory in Pakistan, 'people making cheap clothes for us'.

(...)Were you happy with the New Basement Tapes project, where Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, Jim James and others wrote and ­recorded new music for unreleased Bob Dylan lyrics from 1967?

Well, I’m thrilled with the way the recording sessions came out. That project was one of the most extraordinary events of my life, and I feel like it’s still a work in progress. We got five people that didn’t know each other together for 10 days and wrote and recorded 45 new songs. It was epic, and I don’t think that really came across yet. There’s a film we’re editing now that I think may end up being the definitive version of that whole event, a concert film we shot at the Montalban, where everybody backed each other up with a vengeance. It was a one-time, one-night-only show, and Marcus Heiny, who has done some stuff with us at Capitol before and has done a lot of stuff with Mumford and Sons, came and filmed it. It was guerrilla filmmaking, to be sure. I mean, we decided to do it that morning, practically. That show was really the fruit of the whole experience. By the way, there are another 20-some-odd songs that we haven’t released yet, and we might put out another album of that stuff next year. I look forward to being a steward of all of that material over the next several years.(...)

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

sweetest punch wrote:there are another 20-some-odd songs that we haven’t released yet, and we might put out another album of that stuff next year. I look forward to being a steward of all of that material over the next several years.

I really do enjoy the project and album overall, but there is also a part of me that likes the thought that by the time they release the full batch of recordings, we will essentially have a full album's worth of Costello/Dylan songs. (I believe that it was mentioned in one of the articles or maybe even the doc that EC showed up with versions of all the songs, or most of them, anyway.)